Iron man at Steiner school

The Steiner education methods are very hands on, but even for the pupils of the Kildare Steiner School used to that, a couple of days recently spent blacksmithing were a bit out of the ordinary.



They came courtesy of Bernard Graves, from Stroud in England, who specialises in bringing ‘experiental education’ to schools and to teacher training.

And the youngsters took to the ancient trade with a real enthusiasm, pumping bellows, heating and working iron bars, and generally sparking and soot-smutting all over the place.

They actually built their own pit-forge first, and then Bernard showed them how to set up the rest of a typical old forge, and how to run it.

Bernard doesn’t just do smithing, though. He was running another course in Ireland a few weeks ago which worked students through leathercraft, from skinning the deer all the way through to organically tanning it and then making finished articles.

“I also teach how to work with clay, willow, lime kilns, all sorts of different things,” he says. “But the accent in all of them is to go back to the source of the materials. Of course, in this case you can’t go back to the source of iron, but we do go back in time to when man began working it.”



One of his key ideas when working with children is to show an alternative to the ‘immediacy’ of today, where everything happens more or less instantly, and that is what children come to expect.

“You have to respect that the iPod Age is where the kids live, but there is an opportunity to take them back with something like this. In the process, apart from them learning skills, there is history, geography, science and all sorts of subject areas which come from it.”

After such practical days, pupils can go back to the classroom and tease out with their teachers all sorts things related to the experience. It certainly means they’re not just depending on books, or even more high-tech equipment, to learn all sorts of stuff about the past.

Bernard’s company is called ‘Pyrites: Living and Learning with Nature’. “Pyrites means fire, and everything we do somehow involves fire.”



When Bernard is teaching teachers how to do this kind of work, he usually takes them out into a country location, such as a farm or forests, and shows them how to build their own ‘outdoor classroom’. “I then skill up those who want to bring the concept to their own schools. I have to empower them to do it themselves, because it’s no good me doing it all the time.”

Although the bulk of his work in in Britain, Bernard has worked in Ireland in the Camphill network. “This is my first Steiner School here, and I’ve never done it for any state school here yet.”

He has also brought the ideas to New Zealand and Canada, and he spends quite a bit of his time running conferences and seminars. These are equally as hands-on as the regular courses, but include very intensive evaluation sessions in how experiental education changes those doing it, and on how the systems can be included in their own curricula.

Originally a Botany teacher, Bernard recalls in a humorous way how he got into this whole area. “I had an acorn in my hand and was blathering on to the class about how an acorn becomes an oak. Then I fancied this acorn talking to me and telling me I had never put it into the ground and watched it grow. I realised at that moment that all of my teaching was out of books, as it is for almost everybody, and I had a kind of crisis.”

He stopped teaching for a number of years and went into farming and gardening, and from there into crafts, and eventually, when he felt comfortable with it and began bringing it back into classrooms. He worked for 12 years with the Hiram Trust, which develops this area.

“My teaching now is more with adults who have a perception of the value of this kind of work.”

The sessions were held on the farm of Barney and Dorly O’Sullivan, which borders the Kildare Steiner School on the Dunlavin Road from Kilcullen.

Brian Byrne.

(This story appeared in last week's Kildare Nationalist.)